what’s up TEDx Detroiters how’re you
doing today my name is Bill and I’m an
entrepreneur here in the city of Detroit
and today my talk is going to be about
energy consumption specifically with
buildings but let’s start off with a
little bit of context u.s. alone has
around 319 million people that makes for
around four and a half percent of the
seven billion people that are in the
world and US uses around one-fifth of
the total energy consumption in the
world it’s a huge fact to know if you
were to combine the European Union and
China we use more energy and we have
more missions on a per capita basis as
United States as a country so these
facts are huge another little thing to
keep in your mind is that on a daily
basis United States uses around 19
million barrels of crude oil a day and
that makes for around seven billion
barrels of crude in a year so Americans
we know how to use our energy and from
my talk today I’d like to talk to you
about this building revolution that’s
happening as relates to technology for
how can we begin to figure out ways to
do buildings design and build them in a
way that we can work to not eventually
kill the planet so on this year August
8th we hit what’s called Earth overshoot
day basically what that means as a as
mankind we’ve consumed more energy or I
should say more resources than the
Earth’s ability to replenish them in an
annual basis and that’s important to
understand because then we operate the
rest of the year basically on credit we
have a credit card with the earth if we
look at historical co2 data we can see
that cyclical in nature it’s spiked and
we’re at a level of around 400 parts per
million now like in 2016 which is a
dangerous level to be
with co2 comes the temperature rise so
as long as we’ve been tracking
temperature data by the last hundred
thirty four years since 2000 we’ve had
ten of the warmest years on record this
is these facts are insane
the best way to typically view this are
pictures like this this is a glacier in
Alaska August 1882 August 2005 so
buildings specifically United States are
a large part of the u.s. greenhouse gas
emissions they’re the worst offenders
were around forty one percent compared
to transportation and of course industry
so before we get into some problem
solving solutions and not just talk
about all this negative stuff let’s
first talk about my tutees for you today
I’ve got Tesla the car company and also
turkeys okay so Henry Ford said it best
when he said you can’t build a
reputation on what you’re going to do
that’s why I introduced to you my role
model Elon Musk and Elon is the guy that
came up with the one of the first
electric cars in recent history and with
you know extended range and on a
production basis he’s in a Iron Man suit
because he helped figure out the Tony
Stark character I’ve been told and I
would also love to have an Iron Man suit
fly around it maybe but that was in 2012
so just four years later we now have
around eleven options of EVs with
similar performance on the marketplace
so as a paradigm shift that was hit and
this is just Eevee technology and you
can see electronic vehicle sales growth
is certainly on the rise so my second
thing turkeys we’re coming up it’s
almost Thanksgiving let’s talk about
turkeys so this is a graph of turkeys I
don’t have a picture of a turkey so I’ll
be the turkey basically I’m with my
turkey friends and we’re on the farm and
we’re having a great time and a turkey
way and we’re eating turkey food which
that kind of sounds like the cannibals
but the point is is that you know we
have our annual feast and then BAM that
the turkey is now served it’s on our
plates and there’s no more and the
reason we bring this up is to explain
that from the per turkeys perspective it
was hard to forecast this event from
them they’re just happy and you know
hanging out eat food and I don’t think
they fly but basically the point is to
bring up is that this event can be
related to electronic vehicles it call
us a big related to Passivhaus so of a
weird thing with minions I think they’re
hilarious but Passivhaus is a technology
that is a solution for buildings to be
able to reduce our energy consumption
from a new building by seventy five
percent that’s huge so think about this
for example if your brunch fans on the
conventional side we’ve got that MMO so
with just orange juice a little bit of
champagne
but on the right passive house is all or
excuse me all champagne was just a
little splash of orange juice so bad
example let’s keep going energy
efficiency as a pillar we can say that
when you match energy efficiency
reducing your consumption on a per unit
basis and you add renewables like we
heard earlier today with wind we’ve got
solar as a function as a pillar we can
bring fossil fuel down to destruction
which means that we can get off using
these types of fuels so really quick
what’s pacify us we’re all wondering
Passivhaus is a technology solution that
focuses on the envelope is the actual
the technology of the product it’s a
continuous insulation and airtight
detail south-facing windows helps heat
the house or building in the wintertime
with small mechanical so we just
basically sip fuel rather than actively
consuming constantly all the time and
just like the turkeys and just like the
evey cars Passivhaus has just been out
just a few short years and we’ve seen
doubling growth cumulative growth with
this type and way of building so you
know it must think maybe it’s weird
maybe a passive house looks weird it
doesn’t these are passive houses on the
east and west coast they’re also in
Europe different parts of the country
it’s a global solution ok u.s. is just a
little bit late to the game so I have to
refer to the Germans in in Germany they
have a mature building industry they
operating on the mindset of something
similar to pacifies for quite some time
just in May with renewables they were
almost off-grid consuming no fossil
fuels that’s huge so let me phrase this
conversation bring it back down to
Detroit when’s the last time you
assembled your automobile just in
general except maybe doing a KITT car
but essentially never we focused on
doing this always in a production you
know ability free to be able to produce
cars with focusing on quality time and
efficiency so why are we not doing that
when it comes to construction the United
States there are some exceptions but we
largely are doing everything based off
of on-site stick build so I introduced
to you my company called Phoenix house
we’re over on the east side of Detroit
and we’ve invested in to pacify us as
the technology and doing it in a
prefabricated sense which means it’s
panelized
which means you buy a product it gets
put together on site in a week and
you’ve got a house that’s performing
like I’ve explained what pass fells is
here are some examples of projects that
we’ve either been working with or that
exists these are all Michigan bass and
the one in the top right is one that’s
in Saginaw Saginaw folks like this is
you know this stuff is existing and
people are taking advantage of it the
red ones in Hawley with ones on the
bottom are planned in Ann Arbor and in
Detroit so I leave you with this Martin
Luther King did not say I have a
nightmare
we need to better articulate the dream
to create a restorative future with the
ability to see beyond our outmoded ideas
around sustainability thank you [Applause]